Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D. is a materials physicist, self-owned, a benevolent and tolerant Objectivist, a husband and father, the owner of a materials analysis laboratory, and a thinking individualist. The critical battle of our day is the conflict between the individual and the state. We must be ever vigilant and constant defenders of the equal sovereign rights of the individual to life, liberty, property, self-ownership, and the personal pursuit of happiness.

Among the issues most commonly discussed are individuality, the rights of the individual, the limits of legitimate government, morality, history, economics, government policy, science, business, education, health care, energy, and man-made global warming evaluations. My posts are aimed at intelligent and rational individuals, whose comments are very welcome.

"No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it." Ayn Rand

"Observe that the 'haves' are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots' have not." Ayn Rand

"The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice', but integrity." Ayn Rand

28 November 2009

The primary evidence offered in the UN IPCC reports of 2001 and 2007 for the catastrophic effect of man's carbon dioxide emissions was that there was no natural force that could explain the rapid rise of temperatures in the late 20th Century, so it must have been due to the increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is a dangerous kind of argument to make in any case, since the science of the way in which CO2 itself might be making such a rapid temperature increase as was claimed was itself weak and because the list of understood natural effects on climate was known to be quite incomplete. But, this was nonetheless the argument that convinced many scientists, most of the media, most politicians, and many of the People that catastrophic AGW was a very good reason for drastically changing the way we live, even if it meant a massive economic slowdown, a huge loss of jobs, unreliable and much more expensive energy, and maybe even cold buildings in winters and hot buildings in the summers.

The recent massive release of documents from the most respected of the pro-AGW climate research centers, that of the CRU of the University of East Anglia, showed that there was what can only be called a conspiracy among the small group of climate scientists who played the biggest role in promoting the idea of catastrophic AGW. The major American and Canadian scientists were closely involved along with many of the major scientists in the United Kingdom and others of the European Union. I have earlier discussed some of the problems already discovered with the Michael Mann land temperature proxy and some aspects of the Briffa land data series of proxy temperatures. These two series of reconstructed temperatures from earlier times both produced hockey stick temperature records in which the warmth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) (900 to 1300 AD) was minimized to appear to be much less than that of the late 20th Century despite considerable evidence from other sources that the MWP was actually warmer than the recent period. These series also tended to minimize the decrease in temperatures of the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850) and moderate the temperature increase prior to 1940. From about 1940 to 1976 there was cooling and then the land instrumental temperature record kept by the CRU and by the NASA GISS took off with very rapid temperature increases from 1976 to 1998. This land instrumental record was doctored and affected by heat island effects to make global temperatures seem to rise at a faster rate in this period than they actually did.

It was long known that the catastrophic AGW scientists wanted to hide the warm temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) due to statements one of the in-group made to a scientist he thought was one of them, but who had too much integrity and spoke publicly about the wish to minimize the historical evidence of the MWP. The recent release of documents has brought forth many more issues of unscientific tampering with the temperature measurement record. The most famous such issue of the moment is the "Hide the Decline" issue relating to a temperature proxy series by Briffa, one of the most cited and influential AGW scientists. His proxy temperature data set from tree ring studies used the tree ring data set up to 1960 and then spliced in the instrumental temperature data set from then on. The decline being hidden was not the decline in temperatures since about 1998, but was a substantial decline in temperatures inferred from the tree ring data over the period from 1960 to the end of the 20th Century, which left the temperatures in the latter part of the 20th Century, as inferred from the tree ring data, well below those of the 1930s! The full Briffa tree ring data set is shown below in red, while the portion used as input for the UN IPCC reports is shown in black.

There are a number of interesting things to note here about this data. We know that the late 20th Century was not so much colder than the 1930s as this implies. Another is that the late 20th Century shows a dip in temperatures severe enough to imply that it was as cold as most of the latter part of the Little Ice Age. Well, we know that is not true. This data would also imply that early in the period of temperature decline into the Little Ice Age, it was still warmer than in a few decades of the late 20th Century, which would be consistent with the slightly earlier MWP having been warmer, a fact the AGW scientists wanted to suppress.

But the bottom line here is that the tree ring proxy data appears clearly to be unreliable. The correlation of the tree rings with known temperature data in the late 20th Century is clearly wrong, even though we know the instrumental land data to have been bumped upward artificially, we do know the temperatures really were warmer than those from the tree ring data. There are many factors that affect tree ring growth in addition to temperature, including sunlight available to the tree, which may be shaded by other trees, soil quality, water supply, and disease or bug attacks. Yet this data was a cornerstone piece of evidence for AGW, along with other discredited bristlecone data by Mann.

The trick used to hide this Briffa tree ring problem in the recent 20th Century, which anyone could see was both wrong and inconsistent with the AGW claims, was to terminate the use of the tree ring data set in 1960 and splice in the instrumental temperature record from that time on. Thus, the AGWs could use a tree ring data set that rather flattened the whole temperature record from 1400 to 1960, which had a good low temperature at the end of that series, and could have the stretched out, tampered with land instrumental temperature record added on from that time on. This created wonderful hockey stick data such as that used in the UN IPCC reports. The data from the UN IPCC report of 2001 is shown below.

Whereas the Briffa tree ring temperature proxy data set showed a dip in temperatures after the 1930s that is as much as 0.5 degree Centigrade cooler, this UN IPCC data set shows a dip in the second half of the 20th Century which is a small fraction of that and it is followed by a steep rise to temperatures which have not been matched in the last thousand years. WELL, this is all complete NONSENSE. This is a huge scientific FRAUD. Note the names cited for the temperature curves used in this UN IPCC figure. They are Mann, Jones (head of CRU), and Briffa, all co-conspirators in the catastrophic AGW scandal.

I have earlier discussed other problems relating to the Briffa proxy temperature data sets revealed by Steve McIntyre relating to the Yamal tree ring data from Siberia. Steve McIntyre had much earlier been able to obtain enough of Michael Mann's data to figure out how it had been used to generate false hockey stick temperature data.

Note that the instrumental land temperature record goes back to 1881, but these scientists preferred to use the tree ring data up to 1960, rather than splicing in the instrumental data back in 1881, or anytime earlier in the 20th Century. The tree ring data interpretation gave them lots of room to get the results they wanted or maybe it just happened to give them the result they wanted. If the instrumental record had offered as low a baseline or stick for their hockey stick, they would no doubt have spliced it in earlier at some advantageous time. As I noted earlier, the recent release of CRU documents has also made the very sorry state of the documentation of the original data sets and the adjustments made on them over the years at CRU impossible to reconstruct. The unscientific and sorry state of this data made it impossible for CRU to release this data to Freedom of Information Act requests without huge embarrassment. Their own scientists could not reconstruct results scientists at CRU had published earlier. The released documents clearly show scientists pulling their hair out and going stark raving mad trying to deal with the mess. This being the case, destroying the data, as Jones threatened to do, would have appeared to be the best thing to do!

This conspiracy of scientists claiming catastrophic AGW turned climate science from a little funded scientific backwater into a field funded with literally billions of dollars. It made the few scientists deep in the conspiracy very famous and made them heads of various research centers. It was a very successful fraud for a surprisingly long time. But, the fraud was doomed to be revealed. Because this research had many public policy implications worldwide, it was certain to attract the attention of other scientists and even historians who knew something of the past. More and more, these scientists, just as I did, saw that some very bad science was being done and rewarded heavily by governments looking for another crisis to justify their exercise of more power over the People and to do so worldwide.

Frankly, the claims were fairly obviously bogus and could be readily seen as such by anyone with a reasonable knowledge of history and with a scientifically trained mind. This being the case, we should judge very harshly those scientists who have not spoken out against this fraud, as well as those government bureaucrats in agencies such as NASA, NOAA, EPA, and the State Department here in the US who have been involved with the assessment of AGW issues, and the politicians who have advocated taking drastic actions to curtail and tax the use of cheap and reliable fossil fuel energy without getting good scientific advice. In fact, many of these people were very vociferous advocates that the science was decided and any doubters were foos and even traitors.

I am going to call out the two universities I studied at in particular for having disappointed me by not having a single scientist who argued against this AGW fraud publicly. In fact, both Case Western Reserve University and Brown University promoted the AGW fraud as politically correct on campus and in the school newspapers and the alumni magazines. Shame on you, Brown University and Case Western Reserve University! As in so many other issues, you have both made your bias toward socialism obvious by favoring its appetite over reality.

I also believe that those major companies that jumped on the AGW and alternative energy subsidy bandwagon should be scolded severely. Among these companies are GE, GM, Ford, Exxon Mobil, Shell Oil, and many others who have been claiming to be reducing CO2 emissions in order to save the Earth from a man-made greenhouse gas-induced warming catastrophe. They had a civic duty to declare AGW nonsense and not to seek subsidies and other benefits from the AGW frenzy.

26 November 2009

The EPA monitors six principal air pollutants for which there are national standards. The amount of pollution from these air pollutants has dropped significantly in recent decades. Not that one hears much about this in the mainstream media. These pollutants include SO2 (sulfur dioxide), NOx (nitrogen oxides), particulate matter, CO (carbon monoxide), ozone, and lead. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are also closely watched.

From 1970 to 2004, emissions of these pollutants declined greatly, especially lead, which dropped by 99%. Back on 22 September 2004, the EPA announced that emissions of air pollutants had been cut in half since the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970. Particulate matter was down 81%, VOCs were down 54%, CO was down 53%, SO2 was down 49%, and NOx was down 24%, despite the economy growing 176% during that period.

The declines continue. SO2 emissions from US power plants fell another 24% for the first half of 2009 compared to the first half of 2008. NOx emissions were down 5% in May and 11% in June compared to a year earlier. The EPAs models predict a 70% emissions reduction for cars and trucks over the next 20 years according to the October 2009 issue of Environment & Climate News.

24 November 2009

For so long, Al Gore and other Anthropogenic Global Warming Alarmists have been trying to scare us all to death and back to the caves in penance for our awful planet destruction due to using fossil fuels. They have tried to terrify our children.

So, let's have some relief and perhaps a bit of revenge. Let us enjoy ourselves and rejoice in our deliverance, at least assuming that Obama can no longer get away with further destruction of the economy with his vow to use Chicago enforcement against the AGW doubters and worse yet the deniers, such as me.

23 November 2009

Go here and read about how mysterious the data files at CRU, upon which AGW theory rests, were to one HARRY who had to work on the data in the post 1995 period. It is amazing how undocumented and crazily handled the critical data files for the climate modeling programs were. It is clear no one can now make any sense out of them. HARRY tried and tried and then gave up totally on the pre-1995 data.

Examples of HARRY's exasperation:

So.. we don't have the coefficients files (just .eps plots of something). But
what are all those monthly files? DON'T KNOW, UNDOCUMENTED. Wherever I look,
there are data files, no info about what they are other than their names. And
that's useless.. take the above example, the filenames in the _mon and _ann
directories are identical, but the contents are not. And the only difference
is that one directory is apparently 'monthly' and the other 'annual' - yet
both contain monthly files.

Edit: have just located a 'cld' directory in Mark New's disk, containing
over 2000 files. Most however are binary and undocumented..

The conclusion of a lot of investigation is that the synthetic cloud grids
for 1901-1995 have now been discarded. This means that the cloud data prior
to 1996 are static.

For 1901 to 1995 - stay with published data. No clear way to replicate
process as undocumented.

For 1996 to 2002:
...
This should approximate the correction needed.

These are very promising. The vast majority in both cases are within 0.5
degrees of the published data. However, there are still plenty of values
more than a degree out.

TMP has a comforting 95%+ within half a degree, though one still wonders
why it isn't 100% spot on..

..knowing how long it takes to debug this suite - the experiment
endeth here. The option (like all the anomdtb options) is totally
undocumented so we'll never know what we lost.

22. Right, time to stop pussyfooting around the niceties of Tim's labyrinthine software
suites - let's have a go at producing CRU TS 3.0! since failing to do that will be the
definitive failure of the entire project..

And on and on go HARRY's struggles to reproduce the results of the UN IPCC reports and various peer-reviewed publications upon which they were based. It proves a futile effort. This is the data upon which Obama and the Democrat Congress and our EPA base their claim that we are are in danger of destroying the Earth due to our CO2 emissions. Therefore, we have make drastic cutbacks in fossil fuel use. Therefore, we must put coal workers out of work. Therefore, we must destroy our electric power system since half of our electricity is produced from coal. Therefore we must drive small and unsafe cars. Therefore homes and businesses must pay twice as much for future electricity use, when it is available. It will in fact be erratically supplied at best. Many states already have restrictions on coal-fired power plant electricity.

I would not buy a used car from these fools who have relied upon the Mann and Briffa data and the computer models of CRU and the UN for their assessments of catastrophic man-made global warming. It is clear that Obama and these Democrats are part of the basis for this fraud. The Democrats and their environmentalist allies have long demanded that these frauds be funded and they have supplied them with federal government monies to perform much of this "research." The American People should be disgusted with this combination of gullible and/or shyster socialists who were allies with some very dishonest "scientists" to put this huge fraud over on the American People, not to mention all the other peoples of the Earth.

The discovery or proof of this fraud should make all Americans very, very dubious about anything that Obama and the Democrat leadership says. I believe they were more participants than duped, but whichever is more true, their judgment is completely discredited. It is also completely discredited on the health care issues, job creation, and on union promotion issues as other examples. It is nearly to the point that if the Democrats say anything, the American people should assume it is wrong.

Keith Briffa, whose land surface temperature records have played a vital role in the UN IPCC claim that natural events could not explain what was said to be the unique and hugely rapid increase in temperatures in the late 20th Century, wrote a most interesting e-mail to Professor Michael E. Mann, Director of the Earth System Science Center. Mann was the creator of a surface temperature record of hockey stick data, which was shown to be invalid by Steve McIntyre some time ago. Briffa created similar hockey stick data and some aspects of its creation have recently been shown to be wrong due to the improper handling of data from Siberia. The entire case for catastrophic man-made global warming has been recently shown to hinge upon these the data sets produced by these two men.

In the e-mail, Keith Briffa says to Michael Mann:

I tried hard to balance the needs of the science and the IPCC , which were not always the same.

21 November 2009

The Democrat Senate has put off carbon cap and trade legislation, according to Harry Reid, until the Spring. This is too late for Obama to make a splash at Copenhagen. So, he will have the EPA claim that CO2 is a pollutant and have the EPA put severe restrictions on the use of energy in the US. This is the "operationally significant" energy use restriction Obama has been talking about. He has made some kind of agreement with China, it appears to some, and he and China will announce some restrictions at Copenhagen.

Will we all have to prepare for rolling blackouts? Or, will we be denied the use of our cars on Saturdays? Or will we simply throw more people into the ranks of the unemployed as those businesses which Obama does not like are shutdown? Don't you just love this change and the transformation of America, People? It is coming. If Obama, Pelosi, Reid and their cadres of comrades have their way, this will not be America for long. After all, if CO2 is a pollutant, why should the sovereign rights of the individual be of any significance at all?

Of course, the socialists will push ahead with all of this despite the unraveling of the claimed scientific evidence for catastrophic man-made global warming. This will only prove that the need for the mandate to control the People by controlling their energy use drove the so-called "science,", not the other way around. How revealing!

20 November 2009

A 62 megabytes zipped file which unpacks to yield about 156 megabytes of e-mail correspondence and computer code from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit in East Anglia, the UK, whose data was the primary basis for the UN IPCC reports, including the last one of 2007, has been made public by a hacker or a whistleblower. This information appears to be shedding a lot of light on a conspiracy to mislead other scientists and the public into believing in man-made catastrophic global warming. The e-mail correspondence discusses withholding the original data from review by skeptics and destroying it if need be to do so, control over editors at major scientific journals so only global warming alarmists would be published, cabal control over manuscript reviewers, celebration of the death of a global warming skeptic, and how to skew data to make the warming of the late 20th Century look more alarming and to minimize the lack of warming in this century.

This data is being discussed at Climate Audit and Watts Up With That and many other websites. I have long claimed the science of anthropogenic catastrophic global warming was bad. The mystery was always how had such bad science managed to hijack so many scientific journals, public policy, and the media. The answer appeared to be that it was always mostly about meeting the socialist and internationalist agendas for power and broad control of all of the People of this Earth. This correspondence seems to make it clear that these "scientists" really did have an agenda they held more important than science.

There are at least two major effects to be expected from this. First, it should prove much more difficult for the Democrat Congress to pass the carbon cap and trade legislation in the Senate and for the two houses to come to agreement on a final bill. It should be harder for the EPA to move forward with its stupid claim that CO2 is a pollutant and invoke the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act to restrict its emission. Corollary to these, it should be much harder for the US to submit to any treaty or agreement at the upcoming Copenhagen meeting, though I expect Obama will try still to find every way he can to restrict fossil fuel use in America. This will help tremendously in averting a disaster to our economy, many lost jobs, minimize the arguments for green energy subsidies, and the need to make major changes in our lifestyles.

The second major effect is that science itself will be given a very black eye, despite the heroic efforts of some scientists to combat this bad science and reveal it for the nonsense it was. The People will be less likely to listen to scientists in the future and will not accept their authority so readily. This is both good and bad. I used to think it was principally bad, but now I am seeing this as much more of a mixed bag. The scientific method is still as important as always and I want the People to understand that. These scientists were evil because they subverted scientific thinking. They are to be condemned because they claimed an unwarranted authority and argued from authority to browbeat the public into believing them and following them. It is very important that the People understand that it is always dangerous to submit their minds to simply accepting the word of authorities. There is no real option but to think and think very hard yourself, unless you wish always or more often than not, to be hoodwinked.

There is nothing really different about science than politics with respect to the unwary being hoodwinked if they do not use their own minds to critically evaluate for themselves the truth of everything they are told. There is no substitute for thinking for yourself. It may be more common for politicians to take advantage of those who do not think for themselves than it is for scientists to do so, but we should learn here that there are plenty of people in any profession who will argue from authority to scam the gullible.

19 November 2009

Obama's Recovery.gov website claims to document the number of jobs the Stimulus Bill has created or saved. It reported that 640,329 jobs were created or saved and was helpful enough to break those jobs down by congressional district. The Washington Examiner has now added up the numbers of as-yet known fictitious jobs saved or created and has reached a number of 76,779.

Just to refresh your memory, the $787 billion 2009 Stimulus Bill was said to have created or saved the 640,329 jobs at a cost of $1,229,056 in terms of the allocated money. To adjust for the fact that the government has proven very slow in actually spending the money and will not spend much of it until after the actual recession is long gone, the government claimed to have created these jobs at a cost of $531,250 per job. Now we can adjust this cost per job for the maximal number of jobs which may have been created, 563,550. The cost per job is then $603,628 per job. Wow, I am impressed. The Obama government may be able to create one job with a sum of money that the private sector would create about 12 jobs with. Of course as we discover that more of these created jobs are fictitious, the cost per job will go up and the private sector will look ever more efficient in creating jobs. And we ought not forget that the biggest actual effect of the $787 billion Stimulus Bill was to discourage the private sector from hiring for fear that the heavy government deficit spending would decrease business profits over the longer run as it caused inflation, weakened the dollar, and was used by governments to cause mischief.

The Obama Recovery.gov website has also shown us that this $18 million construct creates fictitious Congressional Districts. It has created 440 such fictitious Congressional Districts. In reality, there are 435 legitimate Congressional Districts. Now as I recall, Obama campaigned at one point in 57 states and thought he had one more state to get to in order to have campaigned in all of the states. That makes 58 states. Now, of course, my readers all know there are 50 states, so Obama inflated the number of states by only a factor of 1.16. The number of Congressional Districts has been Obama-inflated by 2.01, so Obama is gaining skills in inflationary power as he gains presidential experience!

Just to look at the case for Virginia, which has 11 Representatives and therefore has Congressional Districts numbering from 1 to 11, Recovery.gov lists the following fictitious Virginia districts:

00, 12, 13, 17, 21, 25, 36, 51, 79, 98

This is actually a below average degree of Congressional District inflation! But I really get a kick out of District 00 and the fact that District 98 implies that Virginia is much the most populous state in the Union! This takes us right back to the earliest days of the Union, when the Commonwealth of Virginia was just that.

The 12th and 13th Congressional Districts of Virginia were lost after the 1860 Census, and the 17th and 21st Districts were lost after the 1840 Census! Democrats always have been very good at getting the votes of the dead, so it should be no surprise that they are also able to resurrect dead Congressional Districts when it suits their purposes. Interesting thought. Does this mean that we have underestimated Obama's powers as the Messiah? What if he is creating jobs in Virginia prior to 1860 and 1840?!!!!! This would mean he was aiding the cause of slavery in Antebellum Virginia.

Remember that for Obama and socialists of his ilk, the truth is that which furthers the cause of socialism. It has nothing whatever to do with reality.

17 November 2009

Robert Romano, the Americans for Limited Government Senior Editor, has written a good article on Medicare and the Public Option and on taxes and health care rationing. It is called Washington's Degenerate Elite. It tells a story of complete fiscal irresponsibility and of upcoming drastic health care rationing necessitated by biting off more than the government can chew on top of already legislated massive revenue shortfalls. Even so, Romano does not make a critical part of the problem clear because he allows the government to get away with one of its most irresponsible ruses. Let's follow his argument and his tale of the numbers and I will point out where the situation gets still more awful and to use his term, still more degenerate.

The Medicare Board of Trustees says Medicare has $2.5 trillion of assets in 2009. Under a worst case scenario, its assets reach a maximum in 2012 of $2.712 trillion. The program starts operating at a deficit thereafter. In 2019, assets will be down to $2.279 trillion after accumulated losses of $433 billion. Every year after 2012, losses will average about $169 billion per year. In 2028, Medicare assets will be zero.

Now this is bad, but it is actually much worse than this. What are these assets? Well, they are just IOUs written to the program by the government. To make these IOUs good, the government has to increase taxes or greatly decrease its expenditures elsewhere. Obama and the Democrat Congress have no intention of generally decreasing spending by enough elsewhere, so taxes will have to go up greatly. The above paragraph makes it seem as though the increased taxes to continue to fund Medicare must go up when the Medicare assets are gone in 2028. This is not at all the case. They will have to go up in 2013 and thereafter in order to cover the average shortfall in Medicare taxes of $169 billion per year! This is the same year that ObamaCare is supposed to start. So, the degenerates Obama, Pelosi, and Reid plan to add a new huge spending program the same year that the Medicare program starts operating at a loss. Brilliant!!!! These wily, sly socialists are counting on few of the People recognizing this in 2009, which is another of many reasons why they wish to pass this legislation through the Senate this year.

Romano continues with the story. The Public Option of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid will initially cover about 36 to 45 million people. The number of covered people is expected to increase with time. According to the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the cost of the Public Option will be an additional $935 billion by 2019. How do our degenerate socialists plan to pay for this? Well, they plan to ration care under Medicare to the extent that they will reduce its costs by $427 billion by 2019. Note that with no changes of law, we were going to have a deficit of $433 billion by 2019 in Medicare, so these cuts in Medicare, if made, would leave a net deficit of $6 billion in Medicare without the Public Option added expense. With the Public Option added expense, new taxes are required and Obama and his socialist cadres propose new taxes of $574 billion to be collected by 2019. This leaves a combined Public Option and Medicare deficit of $367 billion in 2019. Actually, the deficit will be greater since tax increases do not bring in as much revenue as projected and government plans to cut expenses never reach their goals.

The situation gets worse with time. The Public Option is initially funded by taxes that go up before the program starts, but which will actually be used to pay the government deficits already in place (Stimulus Bill and other expensive programs). Consequently, when the Public Option starts spending money, it will also have to convert IOUs into spendable money, which in practice means that either the deficits will be larger at an earlier time than projected or taxes will have to go up still more. But in the government's ruse, IOUs are gold in the bank and the Public Option debt is only $32 billion in 2017, $59 billion in 2018, and $108 billion in 2019. By 2030, the deficit from this one program would be more than $1 trillion. This is based on a number of people covered which many reviewers think is lower than will actually be the case.

The combined costs of Medicare, Medicaid, and the Public Option will soon be greater than $1 trillion per year. The costs will be increasing every year, which will require severe cuts in health care coupled with severe increases in taxes. The rich will not be able to bear the cost of these taxes, so Obama's pledge to not raise taxes on the middle class will be meaningless, though that has already become very clear in other contexts.

All of the projections on expenses above were made on older June estimates and on very favorable assumptions. The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services now says those June estimates are much too low. The cost of health care will increase fast enough that the deficit in the Pelosi House Public Option plan will be $289 billion greater than the numbers discussed above by 2019. How much greater will they be in the outlying years? Based on past government health care programs, one has to assume they will be many times higher than the costs now projected.

As Romano points out, things get still worse. PriceWaterhouseCooper says the cost of private insurance will be driven upward sharply by ObamaCare. An insurance plan that now costs $4,700 will cost $9,917 by 2019 or 2.1 times more than now. The cost increases for the young will be even larger factors. Many individuals who are now privately insured will be driven onto the Public Option, raising its costs many times. When the Public Option is the last resort, it will also be bankrupt!

This Public Option plan simply makes the already intractable problems with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security much worse. It is utter insanity to add to this existing problem with the Public Option.

Of course, as I have said repeatedly, Obama made his insanity very clear when he long ago said that he intended to bankrupt the coal-fired electric power plants which produce half of American electricity. Apparently, being merely insane is no reason for the American people not to pick a man to be President. In fact, it almost seems that they thought it was a requirement of the job. This man is so wrongheaded on so many things that it is not possible to believe that he perceives reality at all. And he has much company in Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, Waxman, Markey, Baucus (perhaps slightly less insane than the others), Franks, Hoyer, and many others in the Democrat Congress leadership. All of them are bonkers. All of them are Looney Tunes.

It has been pointed out that the military has no problem with Muslims in the military. Indeed, it works hard to encourage them to join and stay in the military. It is very politically incorrect to point out that one is unstable or strongly opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. On the other hand, if there are any gay or bisexual people in the military, the military leadership does not want to know about it. If they do come to know about it, they want them out quickly.

Interesting. At least a couple of Muslims in the military have killed a number of other serving members of the military in the name of Allah in what can only be called terrorist rampages. Have there been any gay or bisexual terrorist rampages? Inquiring minds want to know.

Suppose an injured patient lives in Canada. The patient needs a CT scan to assess the damage and to schedule an operation, if necessary. The time the patient will have to wait for the CT scan is either the next day or more than a month. If an operation is needed, the further wait is a day or more than 3 months.

If the patient waits for 4 months rather than a couple of days to have the injury operated on, is the patient human or not?

By the logic of socialism, if the patient has to wait 4 months for medical help, it is human. For those patients fortunate enough to receive medical treatment under the private enterprise system in Canada, the medical service is great. As John Stossel notes, you just have to bark or meow. Talking is not allowed. Talkers are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law if they go to a veterinarian for faster and higher tech treatment.

16 November 2009

This entry summarizes an interesting report by Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar, a research fellow at Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, who was the editor of the two biggest financial daily newspapers in India, the Economic Times and Financial Express.

India isolated itself from the rest of the world in trade terms and attempted to become economically self-sufficient for the first three decades after its independence in 1947. During that period, India became more and more socialistic under the influence of the Soviet Union and was more and more managed and controlled by the government. India's share of the international export market fell from 2.2% upon independence to 0.45% in 1985. India, being very backward, did grow at at rate of 3.5% per year, but this was slow growth compared to other once backward Asian nations who were more export-oriented. Since India's population was growing rapidly, it per capita growth in this period was only 1.49% per year per person. The reforms which started in 1981 started freeing the economy and growth rates increased. These reforms were undertaken more certainly after the balance of payments crisis in 1991. In the relatively free period from 2000 to 2008, the growth rate was 6.78% and social indicators were much improved.

But what did a decade of economic development delay cost India? As is always the case with socialism, the results are ugly. One decade of delay in economic freedom killed 14.5 million children, kept 261 million Indians illiterate, and kept 109 million Indians unnecessarily in poverty.

12 November 2009

As those of you know who have read from this blog for some time, I greatly admire the work of Dr. Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He has a recent commentary called Random Thoughts, which concludes with the following thoughts:

One of the few advantages to the country in having Congress overwhelmingly in the hands of one party is that the lack of need to compromise lets the leaders of that party reveal themselves for what they are — in this case, people with unbounded arrogance and utter contempt for the right of ordinary people to live their lives as they see fit, much less the right to know as citizens what laws are going to be passed by their government. The question is whether voters will remember on election day in 2010.

Even if this country can survive intact and unharmed after the Obama administration — or, heaven help us, two terms of Obama — the gullibility that led to his being elected in the first place will still be there for some other slick demagogue to come along and get the power to put the American way of life, and even our physical safety, at risk again.

The average transport worker in the SEPTA transportation system of Philadelphia is earning $52,000 a year. They pay 1% of their earnings for their health insurance plan. They must pay about the same amount, however, in union dues to the union. This payment is $530/year. This is the 8th SEPTA strike, with an average strike duration of 34 days. The Transport Workers Union is demanding an average annual pay increase of 2.7%. It seems to me that these workers are already being paid very well given the skill level of these jobs. They have already taken serious advantage of the government-run monopoly on transportation and of the local riders and taxpayers.

The Democrat Congress is considering making it mandatory for all policemen, firemen, and emergency public employees to become labor union members. We will soon see strikes everywhere of critical government employees, if they do this.

Both the Waxman-Markey House of Socialist Representatives carbon cap and trade bill and the Boxer Senate Environment and Public Works Committee carbon cap and trade bill have a common provision to give the President strongman emergency powers. These powers kick in automatically when all greenhouse gases other than water vapor reach an equivalent CO2 atmospheric concentration of 450 ppm. CO2 is presently 399 ppm, but other greenhouse gases are much more potent, such as methane and N2O. They therefore count as large multiples of their ppm concentrations in equivalent CO2 concentrations. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory says that the 450 ppm CO2 equivalent will be reached in a few months.

The emergency power provision requires the President to use all statutory powers of federal agencies to reduce the greenhouse gas concentrations. Given that the EPA is about to gain the power to make draconian cuts in these so-called pollutants under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts by reinterpreting them as invited to do by the courts, the strongman Presidential emergency power will be huge. Obama will be able to give Hugo Chavez a dance for complete and arbitrary power as he decrees which friends of socialism get to continue using power and which have to stop dead in their tracks. Obama will have the power to shut down industries and stop traffic. This power will give him total control of the private sector.

The ensuing unrest may be great. It is for this reason that he wanted a paramilitary service organization of fanatical young Americans straight out of the Socialist Production Factories, our colleges and universities. Remember, he wants them to be as well-funded as the military is now. He will have to operate quickly to set them up, but then quick usurpation of power is his and Pelosi's specialty.

There are heavy consequences to be paid for Americans refusal to take the Constitution seriously. We have lost the principle that that government is good and legitimate only to the degree that it preserves, defends, and protects the sovereign right of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The only way to keep government from usurping power is for the American People to strongly and tirelessly insist that their government operate constitutionally.We have failed to do that and we have never failed so badly as we did in the 2008 elections, with the possible exception of the 1932 elections.

The size of government is far beyond a manageable size. Government in the United States of America is too big and fails constantly. Government at the local, state, and federal levels just keeps on growing and growing. It does not have a going problem, it has a growing problem.

The present Obama and Pelosi socialist federal government is particularly eager to grow. The House of Socialist Representatives just passed an awful bill designed to take over the medical services business in its entirety. The scale of the new bureaucracies being set up, the extent of the new taxes, the cruel and unusual punishments set up for those who disobey its health insurance edicts, the willingness to risk losing a majority in the House, and the explicit acknowledgments that the bill has many, many problems even by its supporters, make it clear that this is the essential step in gaining complete government control of medicine and of each and every individual's body and health.

The U.S. GDP in 2008 was $14.26 trillion. Tax Freedom Day in 2009 has been estimated to be 29 May, by the Tax Foundation. This is 40.8% of the year, so the tax and deficit sum of all U.S. governments is about 5.83 trillion. This includes about half of all medical spending now, so the complete takeover of the medical field by government will add about half of one-sixth of the economy to government. So this addition to government will bring it to about $7.01 trillion. So, we will have central planning management of about half of the U.S. economy.

The Soviet Union did the experiment of trying to manage all of the U.S.S.R. economy. That central planning experiment broke down utterly and completely in 1990 when that economy was about $1.99 trillion. Despite many years of practice in central management of the economy, they failed at a mere $2 trillion. We Americans may be better than the Soviets, at least for now as we coast along on the remains of our Capitalist competence, but are we really three and one-half times better at central planning than the Soviets?

The fact that our governments have not collapsed is a function of two things. One, they have been supported by a larger private sector, which after the medical takeover will no longer be larger. In fact, the additional incursions into energy use and production planned by our Obama-led central planners will leave the private sector smaller than the government sector. Two, as the government becomes larger, we more and more lose the mores and work ethic of the Capitalist private sector, which is critical not just for the revenues and expanding wealth it can produce, but for its encouragement of morality and virtues.

Overly large government not only sucks up our property and income, but it also sucks up our independent spirit, our competence, and our willingness to work. When government devours the private sector, its days are numbered. Government is the natural servant to the People, but the People have no substance without their separate and private identities. We are losing that. To lose the Capitalist, individualistic private sector is to lose everything that gives us Americans an advantage over the Soviets. Soon, we will be the Soviets and we will not be able to maintain a government centrally planning $7 trillion or more of economic activities.

10 November 2009

When exhorting the numerous reluctant Democrats in the House of Socialist Representatives to vote for the unread Obama-Pelosi 1990-page socialized medicine bill, this tyrant and usurper called those of us who have protested against this socialist government and its many infringements of our sovereign, individual rights, those "tea-bag, anti-government people."

OK, I am opposed to this socialist government. I am all in favor of a constitutional federal government, which is to say a government of highly limited powers. I am not an anarchist.

As for tea-bag, that is his idea of being Presidential. It is clearly meant to invoke the crude sexual put-down so popular among the socialists in which they call Tea Party Protesters, Tea-Baggers or say they are tea-bagging. Well, such tea-bags as I have, I am just trying to protect from the hungry lips and devouring mouths of Obama and Pelosi.

After all, we the People have a sovereign right to defend and protect our bodies and our property from those who would force themselves upon us, even if they have all the power of government behind them.

Suzette Kelo and her neighbors once had homes on the site in New London, Connecticut, known as Fort Trumbull, until the city of New London used eminent domain to take their neighborhood for the benefit of Pfizer, which had a nearby research facility. Suzette Kelo, with the help of the Institute for Justice, took the case to the Supreme Court. They argued that eminent domain was for public use, not the private benefit of a company such as Pfizer.

Five of the Supreme Court justices thought that whatever the city of New London thought benefited that government, even if it was pleasing a private company, was adequately definable as public use. The precedent was set for state and local, and presumably the federal, governments to take land and property for any purpose they had a whim to do so for. Indeed, despite the unpopularity of this kind of eminent domain, more and more such takings have been occurring since the Supreme Court ruling in favor of this tyranny.

The land once occupied by the homes of Suzette Kelo and her neighbors is now a wasteland. Pfizer, according to the Hartford Courant, is shutting down its New London research and development headquarters and transferring most of the 1,400 people who work there to Groton, Connecticut. Pfizer is looking to sell or lease its New London facilities. This move results from a recent merger with Wyeth and a decision to reduce their combined research budget by 35%. There is no need for so much innovation now that ObamaCare is on the horizon, with its intolerance for research and innovation in medical procedures and in drug development. Most of the rest of the developed world is already intolerant of innovation with their socialized medicine schemes.

The city of New London is left now without the tax base provided by the 1400 Pfizer workers and without Suzette Kelo's neighborhood. The brilliant central planners have served the taxpayers up a much smaller tax base and lots of vacant, undeveloped land. Pfizer had initially built the facility in New London after buying a 24 acre lot from the city for $10 and being given tax breaks on top of that. Then Pfizer complained that the Fort Trumbull section of town near them was not as up-scale as Pfizer would like its neighborhood to be. The New London Development Corporation, headed by a Pfizer executive's wife and with a Pfizer vice president on its board, moved to seize the Fort Trumbull area. That Development Corp. wanted up-scale condos and a high-rise hotel built there. That has not happened over these last several years, but Pfizer should be able to sell its 24 acres of land for much more than $10! Pfizer sure did a great job of taking New London!

Sometimes those who do evil things to others in order to please evil people, come to feel the brunt of evil on their own heads. It is rather delicious to see. Though I am sure there are some New London residents who did not deserve to share in the consequences.

09 November 2009

Apparently, the socialist Democrat Congress is terrified that many Americans are going to refuse to document having an acceptable health insurance plan to the IRS. Let us take a look at the 1990 page HR 3962 just passed in the House of Socialist Representatives.

If you do not buy one of the very expensive acceptable government health insurance plans, you will be fined $1900. If you do not pay this fine and you do not prove that you have acceptable insurance, you will be fined $25,000. If you do not pay this fine, you will be subject to imprisonment for five years and a fine of $250,000. These penalties are so severe that it appears clear that the socialists are very afraid that many Americans will refuse to go along with this unconstitutional law. Many will feel they are obliged to stand up for our Constitution, even if they will be fined or sent to jail. If many do this, this already unpopular plan will crumble. So, the penalties have to be so severe that all of the Constitution and individual rights defenders will be cowed. These penalties are indeed so severe that it opens a new chapter in American history.

It is as if King George III had said he was going to draw and quarter any American colonist who rebelled. Our Socialist Democrats say they will send any rebel to the Gulag and confiscate everything he owns. This is a strong and blatant statement that they care not a whit for the value of individual lives. This attitude that many American individualists are expendable, is very close to that of Mao, who is so much admired by so many close to Obama.

Apparently, I will be in the Gulag or dead in 2013, unless the Senate refuses to go along with this draconian tyranny or unless it is repealed subsequent to the elections of 2010 and 2012. The socialist Democrats must be thrown out of both the House and Senate and the presidency by 2013, or this blog will end and I will be in the Gulag or dead. That is a bit of a tall order. I hope the American People are still American enough to be up to it.

07 November 2009

The recession has led to less energy use, which has caught the approving attention of Senator Boxer (Democrat, CA). Given her backing of carbon cap and trade legislation, perhaps we have an explanation here for the Democrats being so interested in taking over the health care industry and pushing fossil fuel energy restrictions and taxes, even as the highest unemployment rate in 26 years ravages the USA.

The longer they fiddle while the private sector burns under higher government taxes, more regulations, higher health care costs, higher energy costs, increased labor union threats, loss of creditor standing, dictated management compensations, automotive design mandates, added financial system controls, and anti-business demagoguery, the less energy we use. After all, there is a direct correlation between the amount of energy used and the growth of the economy. This same correlation says that carbon cap and trade will decrease the growth of the economy and will mean there will be fewer jobs. I guess we might as well get used to more than 10% unemployment. It may be around as long as the Democrats control the presidency and Congress. It is such a great way to reduce our energy use and we know how important that is to them.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute used the Freedom of Information Act to force the Treasury Department to release a number of memos about the real costs of carbon cap and trade legislation. It proved difficult to get the Obama administration to give up these memos and reports and they were heavily censored. Censoring of Defense Department documents I understand, but censoring Treasury Department documents is generally much less understandable. It must be an elitist thing. Those dumb taxpayer dolts have no need to know and they would not understand anyway.

Gary Jason gives a rundown on what was found and summarizes some previous estimates of the effect of carbon cap and trade on jobs and costs here. He points out that the CRA think tank estimated that carbon cap-and-trade will cause the loss of 3.2 million jobs in America over 15 years. The Obama Energy Department says that the cap-and-trade bill will increase electricity costs by 20% over 20 years. I think this a terrible underestimate, but Obama did not want this out anyway.

The CEI released memos of the Treasury Department revealed that:

Judson Jaffe of the Office of Environment and Energy estimated the new taxes of the Obama plan will be between $100 and $200 billion a year, which is higher than Obama publicly estimated them to be. The upper end tax cost is an increase of $1761 per family.

An Obama transition memo said that the Obama environmental plan will double the cost to the economy of environmental regulations.

One memo thought the carbon cap-and-trade cost would be $300 billion a year.

A memo said the Obama environmental policies will cost as much as corporate income taxes.

A memo says cap-and-trade will ruin energy-intensive industries, such as manufacturing.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu argues we should make ourselves more competitive in the growing green energy industries by taxing carbon with the carbon cap-and-trade Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act of Kerry and Boxer in the Senate. He claims China is investing heavily in wind and solar power manufacturing and will clean our clock if we do not pass cap-and-trade taxation. Marlo Lewis points out that this is nonsense.

China does not tax carbon dioxide emissions. It is producing wind and solar products for export, not internal use. It is producing electricity now more cheaply with coal-fired power plants.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., the state of Massachusetts is one of the very foolish states already in a cap-and-trade program known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Ten states of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic have pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector by 10% by 2018. This puts them at a competitive disadvantage for power costs and power reliability with respect to many other sates, so they are desperate to get the federal government to make at least such draconian power cuts for the remaining states of the Union. But, let us examine how this cap-and-trade effort is benefiting manufacturer's of green energy products.

Massachusetts gave Evergreen Solar $58.6 million to build a factory in Devens, MA. A little more than a year after opening the plant, Evergreen announced it was moving its solar panel assembly operations to China, where the costs of production are lower. It plans to keep wafer and solar cell production in Devens. One of the lower costs in China is that of energy. In the first 9 months of this year, Evergreen lost $167 million. The market price of assembled solar panels has fallen 30% in the last year. Apparently, even with heavy subsidies, solar power companies have a very difficult time competing with both other forms of energy production and lower cost of production overseas competitors. The free market is not kind to solar power and even extensive subsidies and favorable mandates at taxpayer expense leave many of these companies unable to compete. Massachusetts Gov. Patrick and Obama both are going to be disappointed by the number of American jobs actually produced by green energy.

When the free market says a company is uncompetitive, it is very poor public sector policy to spend taxpayer money on it or to force consumers to buy its high-priced products.

06 November 2009

Donna Edwards is a thorough-going socialist who is in her first full term in the House as the Representative of the district I am unfortunately gerrymandered into. She took over for a guy who stepped down not long after he was elected, who was having problems with the local Democrats because he had some economic and business sense. Until recently, I could go to Edward's website and leave an e-mail comment on what I thought government policy should be. No longer. She takes no e-mails at all. Instead, you can sign up to be surveyed and someone from her office will call you, if they ever feel like doing so. When you sign up for the survey calls, you are also signing up for her newsletter. In other words, it is her job to inform us and to tell us what to do. It is not her job to listen to us and what we think.

At the moment, her website informs us that there are 47 million uninsured people who cannot afford health insurance. That is well-known to be a false statement. She cites many numbers for many things, so one would hope she has looked into the issue of the 47 million uninsured at least a wee bit. If she has, then she is simply lying to her constituents.

By the way, one of the principal reasons why we need an universal health insurance system, according to her, is because one-quarter of all women will at some point in their life be the victim of domestic violence. She says some private insurers will not cover such problems (whether injuries or counseling, she does not say) because they say this is a pre-existing condition.

I have been married for 36 years and I have never hit my wife, but because some guy has hit his wife, I am to be subjected to the tyranny of an universal, government mismanaged medical care system. Donna Edwards probably calls this social justice.

Not since the aftermath of Jimmy Carter's rampant inflation, which followed Nixon's price controls fiasco, have we seen such unemployment as that engineered by Obama and the Democrat Congress. Yes, there was a major increase in unemployment under Bush and the Democrat Congress with considerable help from the Federal Reserve, but we would be recovering from that were it not for the remarkable ability of Obama and an energized socialist Democrat leadership in the House and Senate with their large majorities to create a horrible business climate.

Obama and henchmen would have us believe that our biggest problems are health care and man-made global warming. And maybe that we have too few workers paying union dues and far too many workers in the private sector rather than the public sector. Meanwhile, the private sector still employs most Americans, but it is employing fewer and fewer of them. The official, but understated, unemployment rate at the end of October was an astounding 10.2%! No wonder any hint of such a large increase was suppressed by the administration prior to the election on Tuesday. This is the U.S.'s highest unemployment rate since April 1983, 26 years ago. We have had job losses for 22 straight months.

Obama is conducting a string orchestra in a mad fiddling contest with the devil, the likes of which we have never heard or seen. Nancy Pelosi is first fiddle and Harry Reid is second fiddle of the Congressional section, which is filled out with the fascist socialists of the Congress. On the other side of the string orchestra are the Marxist and Maoist Commissars and Czars of his administration section. They are all fiddling madly to celebrate and encourage the burning of the American private sector and that fable of a Constitution decreeing limited powers for government and that silly notion that individuals have sovereign rights. They are laughing gleefully as they play the devil's tune.

Since December 2007, the U.S. has lost 7.3 million jobs, but we will all be delighted to know that Obama says he saved 640,000 jobs with the stimulus bill earlier this year. Let's see, then $787 billion of stimulus created 640,000 jobs at $1.23 million per job. It is good for people to have a work ethic and to want to work, but it sure is rich to charge taxpayers $1.23 million per job! Or am I being unfair here? After all, only about a quarter of the Stimulus Bill appropriations have been spent. But, then why should we give the government any credit at all for taxpayer money spent just in time to buy as many votes as possible just before the 2010 elections? Even in terms of the money spent, these would be very expensive jobs, at about $307,500 apiece. The private sector would usually produce at least 6 or 7 new jobs with so much capital to invest and spend. But Obama and the Marxists know so little about business and economics that they do not have enough sense not to shout about their "great job creation accomplishment."

So, we now have 15.7 million would-be workers unemployed. Many of them have been unemployed for more than six months, a record 35.6% of them. Before the recession, 63% of adults worked, but now only 58.5% work. The Democrats have championed the little guy, those without a high school diploma, into 15.5% unemployment. Unemployment for those with the high school diploma is a mere 11.2%. 15.7% of blacks are unemployed and 13.1% of Hispanics are also. This is very effective support for these Democrat-favored minorities by the Democrats. Somehow, being anti-business and anti-wealthy people, is not creating the jobs their supposed constituents need. One should be arguing that being anti-business and anti-wealthy people is the equivalent of being anti-black and anti-Hispanic. The private sector lost about 558,000 jobs, but the public sector lost no jobs. The public sector and its employees is now being supported by many fewer people with private sector jobs and we should add the public sector to the enemies of blacks and Hispanics.

Those who have given up on finding jobs and those working part-time who wish to work or work more are now 17.5% of the available workforce. The total hours worked fell another 0.2% in October and the average workweek is now a mere 33 hours. But, average hourly wages are up 2.4% in the last year, perhaps because job losses have been higher among the more poorly paid, who are usually the least productive workers and the first to be let go in hard times. These workers are also the more likely to be intimidated or persuaded to join a labor union, which would further hurt a company's productivity. Thus, it makes still more sense to let such workers go when unions are being favored by government.

There was some good news. Productivity went up per employed worker at a 9.5% annual rate. Unemployment decreased from 4.9% to 4.7% for those with college degrees. Managers and professionals were being hired, so their unemployment rate fell from 5.2% to 4.7%. The technology, education, and health care sectors were hiring. Temporary workers were also hired. But the situation was woeful still for construction, manufacturing, and service and retail.

Apparently, increasing taxes, deficits, government spending, regulations that serve no purpose, restricting international trade, taking over industries, dictating executive compensation, crippling oil and gas exploration and development, threatening the coal industry with extinction, and restricting fossil fuel energy use is not the way to produce jobs. In fact, it is a very good way to kill jobs. This is the Marxist, Maoist, fascist way. The European socialist countries have had 10% unemployment rates very frequently. Obama has imported these unemployment rates to the U.S. The strange thing is, the Europeans have been turning away from some of their failed policies, even as Obama turns us toward them. He is talking about increasing corporate tax rates and those on wealthier individuals, even as most European countries have been reducing those rates in recent years. We and the Japanese now have the highest corporate tax rates in the advanced world. It is hurting both of us badly. But, lowering corporate tax rates just does not fit the Marxist rhetoric or the populist demagogue's style.

05 November 2009

Obama had his socialist heart, if a socialist has a heart, set on going to Copenhagen and showing the world that he, Obama The Great World Leader and Unifier, had dragged the U.S. under the Copenhagen Treaty world governance umbrella to both drastically reduce its irresponsible use of energy and to pay the little-advanced countries of the world a penance fee for their development. It is now fairly clear the U.S. Congress will not give him the carbon cap and trade bill, which was to be his demonstration that he was a Global Warming Alarmist and World Governance leader, in time for the December Copenhagen meeting.

As I have often discussed, there is no Global Warming Catastrophe. There is no reason to be concerned about the increases in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. There is every reason not to ration our use of energy. There is no reason to allow the U.S. government or a World Government to tax or restrict our use of energy.

The draft Copenhagen Treaty proposes that every advanced country be taxed on its GDP. The tax is to be 0.7%. Such a tax on the U.S. economy with a 2008 GDP of $14.26 trillion would be $99.82 billion. Being able to pay so much American taxpayer money to the less developed countries of the world would have made Obama feel like a very big man. A big shot, a VIP. Not to mention such a virtuous man. Of course, the American People would have to pick up the tab and pay the bill for his wining and dining the rest of the world and impressing them with his leadership.

Except, of course, they would mostly really be snickering about how they pulled one off on the USA and those naive American People. It appears that we have escaped this bullet for now. We will have to keep a close eye on the would-be shooters for some time, however. They have made it very clear that they are back-shooters. We always knew the back-shooters were the bad guys in the American West. We had better keep our eyes open.

John Steele Gordon has written an interesting commentary called Obama and the Liberal ParadigmThe sheep are quite capable of looking out for themselves. Someone tell the Democrats. He illustrates the Democrat failure to understand this with Valerie Jarrett's nonsense about "talking truth to power", even as she sits in the White House filling the emptiness in the brain of the President. I do not endorse some of his version of the history, namely the accomplishments of FDR, in this, but his viewpoint is worth understanding and his description of the Democrat paradigm is essentially accurate. That description of the Democrat paradigm formed in the late 1800s is:

The basic premise is that the population is divided into three groups. By far the largest group consists of ordinary people. They are good, God fearing and hard working. But they are also often ignorant of their true self-interest ("What's the matter with Kansas?") and thus easily misled. They are also politically weak and thus need to be protected from the second group, which is politically strong. [He later calls these the sheep.]

The second group, far smaller, are the affluent, successful businessmen, corporate executives and financiers. Capitalists in other words. They are the establishment and it is the establishment that, by definition, runs the country. They are, in the liberal paradigm, smart, ruthless and totally self-interested. They care only about personal gain.[He later calls these the wolves.]

And then there is the third group, those few, those happy few, that band of brothers, the educated and enlightened liberals, who understand what is really going on and want to help the members of the first group to live a better and more satisfying life. Unlike the establishment, which supposedly cares only for itself, liberals supposedly care for society as a whole and have no personal self-interest. [He later calls these the shepherds.]

He then attempts to describe why this paradigm no longer applies with his version of history and the effect of government under FDR and 40 years of Democrat rule having sufficiently penned the wolves. The situation now is:

Not only does the liberal paradigm not even come close to agreeing with the social and economic reality on the ground today, worse, it has largely congealed into a political religion, especially in the nearly 30 years since Ronald Reagan shifted the nation's political center of gravity, just as FDR had done 48 years earlier. Since liberals care about the sheep, all who disagree with liberalism must not, making them morally inferior if not downright immoral. Thus the nastiness in American politics is largely on the left. Whatever you think of Sarah Palin, her treatment in the liberal press was ugliness personified.

But in a world where a majority of Americans work at white-collar jobs, have high-school and college degrees, own their own homes, and hold financial securities in their own right, the so-called wolves are now a majority. If liberals don't begin to take that fact into account in formulating policy, the Obama administration will not only be an unsuccessful liberal administration, it may well be the last liberal administration.

Yesterday's election results would appear to indicate that the supposed sheep are beginning to become aware that they are actually wolves and very capable of taking care of themselves. The shepherds may soon find themselves out of a job. It is about time that Americans remembered that they have prospered mightily in a free enterprise environment, as educated and self-motivated workers whose work is generally in high demand, and as investors in stocks, bonds, and homes. Almost all Americans are the Capitalists so hated by the socialist Democrat Party.

03 November 2009

There is a fundamental difference between reducing costs and simply shifting costs around, like a pea in a shell game at a carnival. Costs are not reduced simply because you pay less at a doctor's office and more in taxes-- or more in insurance premiums, or more in higher prices for other goods and services that you buy, because the government has put the costs on businesses that pass those costs on to you.

Costs are not reduced simply because you don't pay them. It would undoubtedly be cheaper for me to do without the medications that keep me alive and more vigorous in my old age than people of a similar age were in generations past.

Letting old people die would undoubtedly be cheaper than keeping them alive-- but that does not mean that the costs have gone down. It just means that we refuse to pay the costs. Instead, we pay the consequences. There is no free lunch.

Of course some of the voters understand this and can see through the sleigh of hand, but most people cannot. We need to find a way to keep most people from falling prey to such deceptions. It would help if they were educated in real schools that would prepare them with a real knowledge of history, politics, and economics. People need to be educated in the critical thinking skills that voters in a republic ought to have. Our present government and socialist labor union run school systems have no incentive to give students these critical thinking skills. They are happy with blank-minded politically correct and shell-game blind students. We get exactly what they intend to give us. The government schools do not fail in their goals, because they do produce the intended zombies that socialists want for followers of the messianic leader.

02 November 2009

The U.S. Department of Education has released a study of the fourth and eighth grade reading and math testing performed in 2007 compared to that of 2005. They found that 15 states lowered standards in one or more of the tests, while 8 states raised their standard on one or more test. Using the standards of 2007, 17 states required proficiency in fourth grade reading at a Basic Level, while 31 set their standards below the Basic Level. The standardization of the requirements was performed according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). State testing is required by the No Child Left Behind Act. By law, all students are required to be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

However, the states do the testing. It is clear that in their desire to achieve the results required, the government-run schools are lowering the standard requirement, rather than requiring the students to hurdle the bar. The NAEP standard in Tennessee is 198, while it is 254 in Massachusetts. Maine, Oklahoma, and Wyoming lowered their proficiency standard in both math and reading in both the fourth and eighth grades. Maine at least maintained a standard at the Basic Level, but Oklahoma and Wyoming did not.

My state of Maryland is one of the majority of states with standards below the Basic Level. Virginia, Ohio and the entire eastern Midwest, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and all of the western states, except a few on the Mississippi River and New Mexico, Nevada, and California are states with Below Basic standards. Pennsylvania, New York, and all of New England are at the Basic Level. So are South Carolina, Florida, and Hawaii. The Mississippi bordering states with the Basic Level standards are Minnesota, Missouri, and Arkansas.

If you have a government monopoly advantage on any service, whether postal, education, transportation, garbage collection, health care, etc., the standards of service drop.

Ayn Rand on Morality

"The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live."

Anthem by Ayn Rand

"For the battle they lost can never be lost. For that which they died to save can never perish. Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through. And man will go on. Man, not men."

James Madison

"Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people, by gradual and silent ancroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations: but, on a candid examination of history, we shall find that turbulence, violence, and abuse of power, by the majority trampling on the rights of the minority have produced factions and commotions, which, in republics, have more frequently than any other cause, produced despotism."

General George S. Patton

"If everyone is thinking alike, then someone isn't thinking."

H. L. Mencken

"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face to rule it."

George Orwell

"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history."

H. L. Mencken

"If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner."

Thomas H. Huxley

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin."

Thomas Jefferson on Democracy

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

Henry Ford

"Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work."

Thomas Jefferson on Truth

"Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them."

"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

Niccolo Machiavelli

"One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived."

Sherlock Holmes

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." Or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle if you prefer.

Mary McCarthy

"Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism."

Sen. Tim Wirth, Democrat, Colorado

"We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory is wrong, we will be doing the right thing."

Bismarck

"Fools learn by experience, the wise man learns by the experience of others."

Albert Einstein

As Albert Einstein once said about the book "One Hundred Authors Against Einstein": “Why one hundred? If I were wrong, one would be enough.”

Governments are Never Sovereign

Only individuals are sovereign. Governments are either legitimate or illegitimate. They are legitimate only to the extent that they protect the exercise of every individual's right to life; liberty; the ownership of their own mind, body, and labor; their property; their freedom of conscience and association, and the pursuit of their own happiness. No government on Earth is highly legitimate. Most are highly illegitimate.

So sayeth Charles R. Anderson.

Dr. Thomas Sowell is Retiring

"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."

"The real minimum wage is zero."

"The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best."

"People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do."

"The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses, it is about the egos of the elites."

"If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism."

Prof. Walter E. Williams on Democracy

"... one of the primary dangers of majority rule is that it confers an aura of legitimacy and respectability to acts that would otherwise be deemed tyrannical."

Ayn Rand on Minorities

"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."

Hillary Clinton on Job Creation

"Don't let anybody tell you that, you know, its corporations and businesses that create jobs."

Socialists never want anyone to credit individuals with a productive purpose as the source of their jobs. When the government piles on such heavy taxes and regulations as to prevent job formation, they are always trying to misdirect the people's attention. Hillary has been vigorous in promising more taxes and more major regulations which will make the Obama record of 0.5% annual increases in real per capita GDP look good in comparison.

Frederic Bastiat

"It's impossible to introduce into society a greater evil than this, the conversion of Law into an instrument of PLUNDER."

Ayn Rand

"The number of its adherents is irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of an idea. A majority is as fallible as a minority or as an individual man. A majority vote is not an epistemological validation of an idea." ... "it is important to note the epistemological significance of a free society. In a free society, the pursuit of truth is protected by the free access of any individual to any field of endeavor he may choose to enter." ... "This prevents the formation of any coercive "elite" in any profession -- it prevents the legalized enforcement of a "monopoly on truth" by any gang of power seekers -- it protects the free market place of ideas -- it keeps all doors open to man's inquiring mind."

The catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis is no exception to these general truths about the right of every individual to examine and evaluate any idea.

Do Not Subordinate Your Mind to the Mind of Another

The vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.

John Galt in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

UN Agenda 21, Principle 15

"In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation."

The real operating principle: Neither shall total lack of scientific certainty delay taking action with catastrophic economic effects if one can imagine some environmental degradation.

Dr. Thomas Sowell

"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today."

"What 'multiculturalism' boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture -- and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture."

"It is so easy to be wrong -- and to persist in being wrong -- when the costs of being wrong are paid by others."

"Intellectuals have trouble remembering that they are not God."

Saul Alinsky

"To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody. Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life."

It is good to understand what the nihilists think, especially since such politicians as Obama and Hillary admire this man and use his principles for damaging the private sector and Capitalism.

Ronald Reagan

"If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?"

A democratic society that needs a much-controlling government to manage the affairs of its People has a People so lacking in character and ability that there is no hope the People can democratically elect leaders of good character and adequate capability. That society is doomed by a self-contradiction. The escape from doom is the development in the People of such character and ability that they shun a much-controlling government.

Aesop

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."

Christine Stewart, Canadian Minister of the Environment

"No matter if the science of global warming is all phony.... climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world."

What a sad thing is attempted justice without truth.

Aldous Huxley

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."

Ayn Rand

"'There are no evil thoughts, Mr. Rearden,' Francisco said softly, 'except one: the refusal to think.'"

Francisco D'Anconia to Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged

Frederic Bastiat on the Law

"It has been used to destroy its own objective. It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.”

Louis L'Amour in High Lonesome

"Folks talk a lot about the maternal feeling in women, but they say nothing about man's need to protect and care for someone; yet the one feeling is as basic as the other."

"Nor were they free of the images their own minds held of themselves. The man on horseback, the lone-riding man, the lone-thinking man, possessed an image of himself that was in part his own, in part a piece of all the dime novels he had read, for no man is free of the image his literature imposes on him. And the dime novel made the western hero a knight-errant, a man on horseback rescuing the weak and helpless."

Dr. Thomas Sowell

"Today one can literally go from kindergarten to becoming a graduate student seeking a Ph.D., without ever hearing a vision of the world that conflicts with the vision of the left."

"Even liberal professors can be adversely affected by the narrow groupthink that prevails. Without an opposition to keep them on their toes, they can develop sloppy habits of dismissing or even demonizing differing viewpoints, instead of practicing and teaching their students how to come to grips with opposing beliefs."

From Dry Rot in Academia

John Stuart Mill

"In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character was abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time."

Josepth Stalin

"We don't let them have ideas. Why would we let them have guns?"

Robert Tracinski

"The way we view the naked human body reflects our view of human nature itself. We portray our bodies in ways that are crude or refined depending on whether we view our souls as crude or refined. And we do the same with the sensuality and the sexual capacity of our bodies. We can view sex and the nude body as a dangerous temptation that draws us away from higher ideals and down into the muck—or we can make it part of those higher ideals. We can make it an expression of a wider lust for life, an expression of the same spirit of aspiration that drives all of our other achievements."

The Three Graces by Antonio Canova

David by Michelangelo

Frederic Bastiat

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."

"But how is this legal plunder to be to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime."

Ayn Rand on Excellence

"If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing."

Ayn Rand

"The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see."

Patrick Henry

"No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles."

H. L. Mencken

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Catastrophic man-made global warming is a great example of such alarmism to justify more power for the politicians and bureaucrats.

Thomas Jefferson

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add, `within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrants will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."

Ayn Rand

"Serenity comes from the ability to say 'Yes' to existence. Courage comes from the ability to say 'No' to the wrong choices made by others."

Galileo Galilei

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."

"By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox."

Henry Ford

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

Samuel Adams

"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending against all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks."

The Constitution itself remains a strong defense of our individual rights, but those who want power over our lives have long claimed ridiculous interpretations of the powers it grants to the federal government which they have cemented in irrational precedents. Time after time, the fact that our individual rights are broad and must allow each of us to manage our own lives while we pursue our own chosen values, so long as we do not violate the equal rights of others, is a context ignored.

Thomas Jefferson, 1816

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

When the government controls the education system, you can be sure the education system will guarantee the ignorance of the people so they may be ruled without the impediment of the people demanding their individual rights.

John C. Goodman

"Closing Off Consumption Opportunities. Just as low-income individuals in their role as producers are increasing[ly] regulated out of income earning opportunities, in their role as consumers they are increasingly regulated out of the market for essential services. In addition to education and housing, they have been regulated out of the market for medical care, transportation and even police protection. For all these essential services, the wealthy turn to the private marketplace. They even employ police officers as off-duty, private guards for their gated communities. The poor are left with public housing, public schools, public transportation, government-provided health care, etc.

The well-off get all the benefits of capitalism. The poor are left with socialism."

Averroes

"An army of philosophers would not be sufficient to change the nature of error and to make it truth."

An army of scientist mercenaries at the service of All-Controlling Government is not sufficient to make the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis true either.

Ayn Rand on the Creative Man

"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."

Lawrence W. Reed

"It constantly amazes me that defenders of the free market are expected to offer certainty and perfection while government has only to make promises and express good intentions."

Patrick Henry

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government lest it come to dominate our lives and our interests."

Prof. Walter E. Williams

"That initial premise is that each of us owns himself. Stated another way: I am my private property and you are yours. The institution of private property is the right held by the owner of property to keep, acquire, dispose, and exclude from use. The premise of self-ownership determines which human acts are moral or immoral and consistent with that premise. For example, rape, murder, slavery, fraud, and theft are immoral because they violate private property."

Thomas Jefferson

The "sum of good government" is one "which shall restrain men from injuring one another" and "shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement."

The presumption is maximum liberty limited not by the welfare of others, but only by the injunction to do no harm to others.

H. L. Mencken

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."

Madison Versus Hitler

"(The Constitution preserves) the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation... (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." James Madison

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so." Adolf Hitler

Frederic Bastiat

"The most urgent necessity is, not that the State should teach, but that it should allow education. All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly of education."

Mark Twain

"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."

This certainly applies to those who believe in the catastrophic man-made global warming alarmists, minimum wage laws, ObamaCare, the ethanol in gasoline mandate, and tying solar and wind power in high percentages to the electric grid.

Prof. Walter E. Williams on White Privilege

"The concept of white privilege, along with diversity and multiculturalism, is part of today's campus craze. .....

The bottom line to this campus nonsense is that "privilege" has become the new word for "personal achievement." ....

Are those who work hard, take risks, make life better for others and become wealthy in the process the people who should be held up to ridicule and scorn? And should we make mascots out of social parasites?"

Albert Einstein

"A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth."

Prof. John Christy, Climate Scientist

“If it’s not economically sustainable, it’s not sustainable.”

Ayn Rand on Human Progress

"Man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress."

George Orwell

"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it."

Abbot of Arbroath, Chancellor of Robert the Bruce

"For so long as one hundred of us shall remain alive we shall never in any wise consent to submit to the rule of the English. For it is not for glory we fight, for riches, or for honours, but for freedom alone, which no good man loses but with his life." April 1320, Six years after the Battle of Bannockburn

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body; this means merely that he will be forced to be free."

If one is told " 'it is expedient for the state that you should die,' he should die."

From The Social Contract, a most emphatic statement of authoritarian collectivism by a profound misanthropist.

Patrick Henry

"The Constitution is NOT an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the PEOPLE to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interest."

Dwight D. Eisenhower

"If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government."

Alexander Hamilton

"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."

"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government."

Milton Friedman

“A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it ... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”

John Quincy Adams

"Muhammad declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind... The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Muhammad is the prophet of God."

Justice Robert H. Jackson

"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."

This applies to the government-run education system, as well as every other act of government, including its procurements.

Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead

"Don't bother to examine a folly, ask only what it accomplishes."

Ayn Rand's villain giving us insight into the beliefs of the Progressive Elitists and others with beliefs too divorced from reality to be creditable, yet widely believed or propagated.

Thomas Jefferson

"let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution."

Of course this belief implies those great constraints on democracy imposed by the Constitution.

About Me

I enjoy rational analytical conversations, learning from thinking people, and solving problems of science and technology. My perspective is that of an Objectivist with a joyous sense of life, a great appreciation for human complexity, differentiation, and achievement, and a benevolent regard for others. Nothing clarifies understanding like writing about it or trying to teach ideas. A recurring theme is the importance of individuality and the fight for individual rights against the onslaught of the Nanny State and socialism. I wish to live the life of a rational self-managing adult and am amazed that so many others wish to be perpetual children. The fear, envy, and guilt that cause many to yield their individual rights to collectivism are ugly, anti-life emotions. I consistently believe in both the personal and the economic rights of the sovereign individual. As the United States Declaration of Independence says, each of us has the selfish right to our life, our liberty, and our pursuit of happiness. Our mostly ignored Constitution attempts to severely limit the powers of the federal government and to preserve the development and the exercise of our individual conscience.

Robert Tracinski

"The real minimum wage is zero. Actually, it’s less than zero: the real “minimum wage” is going into debt just to have a shot at doing the work you love."

I went hugely into debt to set up my materials analysis laboratory and paid myself only $10,000 in the first year and even less in the Obama Recession years of 2010 - 2012.

Obama

“When what you’re doing doesn’t work for 50 years, it’s time to try something new.” 2015 State of the Union Address

So, we should ditch Big Government, government health care, The War on Poverty, The War on Drugs, Social Security, the Federal Reserve, government-run education, the Davis-Bacon Act, the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (the Jones Act), and all expansionist interpretations of the Interstate Commerce and the Taxation Clauses of the Constitution upon this Obama Principle of Failure.

Louis L'Amour

"when in doubt, sit down and think. It is only the mind of man that has lifted him above the animals." Evie's Dad

"If he starts anything with me I'll just cloud up and rain all over him." Conagher

"You better ride out of here, Staples. An' leave that gun alone. You ain't fit to handle one. And don't you cross my trail again. I don't like bein' braced by no tin-horn." Conagher

"To be a man was to be responsible. It was as simple as that. To be a man was to build something, to try to make the world about him a bit easier to live in for himself and those who followed." Conagher

"it was the man who planted a tree, dug a well, or graded a road who mattered."

"Conagher had worked too hard too many times to like a thief or a vandal who would steal or destroy the efforts of other men."

Big Bill Knudsen on Progress

"Progress is only made when fear is overcome by curiosity. If you are curious enough, you will not have any fear."

William S. Knudsen

Elbert Hubbard

"Prison is a Socialist's Paradise, where equality prevails, everything is supplied, and competition is eliminated."

Charles R. Anderson

"Every law mandates more guns. Most laws now outlaw individual value choices and more voluntary cooperation among individuals."

Bad Deeds by Robert Bidinotto

2nd Great Thriller about Bringing Justice to Eco Terrorists -- Nominated for Conservative-Libertarian Fiction Book of the Year 2014

Charles Anderson on Hope

".... hope is contingent upon having the freedom to make your own value choices and make their achievement your personal dream. Without the dream, there is no hope. Without the value choice, there is no dream."

A Collapsing Predation, a Plea for Salvation

"These are just plain, ordinary people, Mr. Galt, " said Chick Morrison in a tone intended to project their abject humility. "They can't tell you what to do. They wouldn't know. They're merely begging you. They may be weak, helpless, blind, ignorant. But you, who are so intelligent and strong, can't you take pity on them? Can't you help them?" "By dropping my intelligence and following their blindness?" "They may be wrong, but they don't know any better!" "But I, who do, should obey them?"

From Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Sen. Tom Coburn Addressing the Senate

"Your whole goal is to protect the United States of America, its Constitution and its liberties. It's not to provide benefits for your state. That's where we differ -- that's where my conflict with my colleagues has come. It's nice to be able to do things for your state, but that isn't our charge. Our charge is to protect the future of our country by upholding the Constitution." December 2014

James Madison on Laws

"It will be of little avail to the people ... if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood."

Yet this is exactly the sorry state of law in America today. Even the legislators whose full-time job is to make laws cannot read them before voting on them. How can it even be imagined that a small businessman can know the law and the voluminous regulations applied most especially and most vigorously to commercial endeavors? It cannot be so imagined, which makes it clear that the intent is to make every businessman a criminal precariously dependent upon the goodwill of those with power in the government.

Charles R. Anderson on Argument

"Observe which side resorts to the most vociferous name-calling and you are likely to have identified the side with the weaker argument and they know it."

From my statement in the Senate Minority Report of 2008 on Man-Made Global Warming Claims.

Ben Franklin

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

Ayn Rand on Force and Morality

"Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins." From Atlas Shrugged

The Neverending Battle for Freedom

Requires a Knowledge of Moral and Political Principles

Winston Churchill

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy."

Ludwig von Mises

"A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings."

Ayn Rand on Truth Seeking

"The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it."

Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D.

Charles in Laboratory

Benno Schmidt, President of Yale, March 1991

"The most serious problems of freedom of expression in our society today exist on our campuses ... The assumption seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce correct opinion rather than to search for wisdom and to liberate the mind."

Tacitus, 56 - 120 A.D.

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. "

The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state.

George Eliot

"The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice."

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular -- but one must take it because it's right."

Is that not all times?

Public Servant Tyrants

"The people must remain ever vigilant against tyrants masquerading as public servants." George Washington

Aristotle on Inequality

"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal."

Claiming unequal things equal in mathematics is obviously wrong, but so is claiming the equality of an individual with good character to an individual of bad character fraught with deleterious consequences.

Mencken on Public Education

"The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all: It is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality." Henry Louis Mencken (1880 - 1956)

Thomas Edison

"From his neck down, a man is worth a couple of dollars a day; from his neck up, he is worth anything his brain can invent."

Ayn Rand on Self-Assurance

"But why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself." From The Fountainhead

Frederick Douglass

“A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.”

William S. Knudsen

"A conference is a gathering of guys that singly can do nothing and together decide nothing can be done."

Big Bill Knudsen was the manufacturing genius from the automotive industry who decided that U.S. WWII warfare production should be performed in the private sector with as little government interference as possible. U.S. production overwhelmed that of the Axis Powers as a result and the transition back to peace-time production was vastly eased. He is a little-recognized American Hero.

Margaret Thatcher

"Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy."

Pajama Boy for ObamaCare

I'll be an adult when I am 26. I have no job and live with Mommy. I will get a big subsidy when I go on ObamaCare. Good thing, because medical insurance costs for young men in my state are 2 to 3 times what they used to be. If my gender studies degree ever gets me a job, medical insurance will cost me a fortune. I'd rather just sit at home drinking hot chocolate and have Mommy feed me and do my laundry.

Ayn Rand on Lack of Self-Direction

"The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap." From The Fountainhead

Bastiat on Socialism

"Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole—with their common aim of legal plunder—constitute socialism." Frederic Bastiat, 1801-1850

James Madison

Property is "every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage."

"He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them."

"Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own."

"That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property so called."

"If there be a government then which prides itself in maintaining the inviolability of property: which provides that none shall be taken directly even for public use without indemnification to the owner, and yet directly violates the property which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their persons, and their faculties; nay more, which indirectly violates their property, in their actual possessions, in the labor that acquires their daily subsistence, and in the hallowed remnant of time which ought to relieve their fatigues and soothe their cares, ... such a government is not a pattern for the United States."

[Yet such a property violating government we now have.]

Obama According to Ron Pisaturo

"My opponents don’t have a plan for the economy, for education, for training, for retirement, for health care, for energy, for jobs, for wages, for investments, for diets. What kind of dictators are they?"

Ron Pisaturo's paraphrase of Obama's State of the Union Address in January 2014.

Starve the Kleptocracy and Tyranny

and Promote the General Welfare by Protecting Individual Rights

John Galt on the Battle

John Galt says in Galt's Speech in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand:

Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.

Groucho Marx

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies."

Charles in Pensacola, FL

Boy with a Purpose

Andrew Jackson

"Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society -- the farmers, mechanics, and laborers -- who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government .... If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, [government] would be an unqualified blessing."

Jay Leno

"The White House admitted President Obama’s chief of staff had advance warning that the IRS was targeting conservative groups. President Obama says the first time he heard about the IRS and AP scandals was from the media. See, that’s why President Obama holds press conferences. It’s not to explain what’s going on. It’s to find out what’s going on."

Government is too big to be well-managed even by a competent manager. It is now apparent what happens when the chief executive is incompetent, but is convinced he is the chief Progressive Elitist.

Thomas Jefferson

"The democracy will cease when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

James I, King of Great Britain

"The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth, for kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called gods."

There is historical precedent for the level of hubris of the Progressive Elitist rulers of our time. Just as James I tried to rule independently of Parliament with a claim of god-like knowledge, so does Obama rule independently of our Congress, secure in the belief that he too has a god-like knowledge of what is best for the People.

2nd Amendment Right

Calvin Coolidge

Reduced top income tax rate to 25%.Reduced the national debt.Balanced and reduced the budget.Vetoed 50 bills.

"I am for economy, and after that I am for more economy.”

“It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.”

A Novel by Gen LaGreca

A Dream of Daring - A thickly plotted romantic novel

Jean Jacques Burlamaqui

"Natural liberty is the right, which nature gives to all mankind, of disposing of their persons and property, after the manner they judge most convenient to their happiness, on condition of their acting within the limits of the law of nature, and their not abusing it to the prejudice of their fellow men. To this right of liberty there is a reciprocal obligation corresponding, by which the law of nature binds all mankind to respect the liberty of other men, and not to disturb them in the use they make of it, so long as they do not abuse it."

Kail M. Padgitt, of the Tax Foundation produced the 2011 State Business Tax Climate Index in October. The report evaluates the effects of...

Pamela Geller

In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel, Defeat Jihad

Roger Scruton, 2006

The English law existed not to control the individual but to free him.

Laurence J. Peter

Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.

Ben Franklin - 2nd Amendment

"Democracy... Is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty... Is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."

This is why every individual has the right to defend himself, as recognized in the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

John Milton

"Where there is much desire to learn, here of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making."

Cato's Letters

"the power which every Man has over his own Actions, and his Right to enjoy the Fruits of his own Labour, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Members of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys."

They Would Rule the People

Rather than Serve the People

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

More Important than Ever

Atlas Shrugged, Part II

The Movie, Either-Or, Now on DVD

Democracy -- The Suicide

"Remember democracy never lasts long. It soonwastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." John Adams, letter to John Taylor, April 15, 1814

Thomas Jefferson

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Praise the Constitution

and Pass the Intellectual Ammunition

Ayn Rand: Philosophical Detection

What objectivity and the study of philosophy require is not an "open mind", but an active mind -- a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them critically. An active mind does not grant equal status to truth and falsehood; it does not remain floating forever in a stagnant vacuum of neutrality and uncertainty; by assuming the responsibility of judgment, it reaches firm convictions and holds to them. Since it is able to prove its convictions, an active mind achieves an unassailable certainty in confrontations with assailants -- a certainty untainted by spots of blind faith, approximation, evasion and fear.

If you keep an active mind, you will discover (assuming that you started with common-sense rationality) that every challenge you examine will strengthen your convictions, that the conscious, reasoned rejection of false theories will help you to clarify and amplify the true ones, that your ideological enemies will make you invulnerable by providing countless demonstrations of their own impotence.

Alan MacFarlane, 1978

The majority of ordinary people in England from at least the thirteenth century were rampant individualists, highly mobile both geographically and socially, economically rational, market-oriented and acquisitive, ego-centered in kinship and social life. Perhaps this is no surprise, for it makes them very like their descendants.

On Error and Judgment by Ayn Rand

An error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.

Howard Roark at his trial:

"I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need." .....

"I wished to come and say that the integrity of a man's creative work is of greater importance than any charitable endeavor. Those of you who do not understand this are the men who're destroying the world." ...

"I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society."

Thomas Jefferson

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

Despite the fact that NASA scientists are among the foremost promoters of catastrophic global warming due to man's use of fossil fuels a...

California Venus

Rupert Schmid, 1864-1932

George Bernard Shaw

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."

Paul's immorality is soon characteristic of the entire society, contributing evermore to strife and conflict and the discouragement of productive labor.

Fight Big Government

Reduce Spending

Thomas Paine on Principle

"A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice."

Limited Government Capitalism

is the only system that allows Individuals to make their own moral choices and to act upon them. Without individual moral choice, there is no morality and society is mean, brutal, envious, and depressing.

The Homage of Reason

"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." Thomas Jefferson

Tocqueville

“a man’s admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him”.

First ObamaCare Stole Your Body

Minimum Family Plan = $20,000

In the name of the best within you,

do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.

But to win it requires your total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, and grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.

Immoral Government Health Care

Barack Hussein Obama

Consensus

Consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually"- Abba Eban

Obama's Socialism

Absolutely Childish, Banal Thinking

Rose Robbins - Singer/Songwriter

A Goddess would envy her voice.

Who is John Galt?

From John Galt's Speech to Americans in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand:

"I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values."

"Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act, he must know the nature and purpose of his action."

"But to think is an act of choice." ..... "In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival -- so that for you, who are a human being, the question 'to be or not to be" is the question 'to think or not to think.'

"A being of volitional consciousness has no automatic course of behavior. He needs a code of values to guide his actions. 'Value' is that which one acts to gain and keep, 'virtue' is the action by which one gains and keeps it. 'Value' presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? 'Value' presupposes a standard, a purpose and the necessity of action in the face of an alternative. Where there are no alternatives, no values are possible."

"There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or non-existence -- and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms."

"Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice -- and the alternative his nature offers is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man -- by choice; he has to hold his life as a value -- by choice; he has to learn to sustain it -- by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues -- by choice."

"A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality."

"Man's life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose. If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man -- for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life."

"Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values. A morality that dares to tell you to find happiness in the renunciation of your happiness -- to value the failure of your values -- is an insolent negation of morality. A doctrine that gives you, as an ideal, the role of sacrificial animal seeking slaughter on the altar of others, is giving you death as your standard. By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man -- every man -- is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose."

Thus said John Galt, or shall we say Ayn Rand, the great novelist, philosopher, moralist, and Capitalism's greatest moral defender. The quoted sections above are an abridgment of John Galt's speech in the novel Atlas Shrugged. Between the quotes, no changes were made.

A Call to the Sons of Liberty

This is not the time for summer soldiers. This is a time of American crisis calling for winter soldiers.

John Paul Jones

I have not yet begun to fight! The image is from the Navy Memorial.

Thomas Jefferson:

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

Charles R. Anderson, Ph. D.

The First Known Use of the Concept Freedom

Amagi, or Freedom, in the cuneiform shown above, is first known to have appeared in a clay document in 2300 BC in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.

The Rational Mind Seeks Truth

in the critical observation and understanding of reality. Reality is primary, not man's wishes and whims.